#003 Hiring, Hurricanes, & Community with Todd Neville

Todd Neville: Thanks for having me, Jay. Looking forward to the interview.

Jay Owen: Those of you listening have heard the podcast before know the purpose of this podcast is to talk to other business owners who’ve been around for a while and just get some insight into them and their lives and how they started and how they’ve lasted the test of time. Because it’s easy to start things sometimes, but it’s hard to keep them going in the long run. Stats always show that. I just like to get started and hear from you your story, how you got started, how you ended up where you are now and that’s kind of a broad question, but still just give us a little bit of insight of how you got to where you are business wise.

Todd Neville: Well, a little background. My family moved here when I was in high school. Moved to St. Augustine. I have a twin brother and a sister. My parents still live here in town and that was back in 1990. During the summer times I would come back to St. Augustine from school. My brother, sister and I, we all went to different schools. I was the one of the three kids who would come back ever summer and I ended up interning with a local CPA firm here in town. The two partners in that firm both got big accounting firm experience and they gave me that advice. When I finished my internship with them, they said, “You know, we want you to go get that same sort of experience. We want you to go work for one of the real large firms.

Learn the tools of the trade. Have somebody else train you and then we’ll bring you back to St. Augustine when we think you’re ready.” As a 22 year old, it was one of those moments where I thought they didn’t want me. I had other friends who had internships and had job offers waiting. I felt a little depressed about it. I thought, “Man, I could come back to St. Augustine right out of school,” but I ended up getting a job in Chicago. I went to Indiana University so it was up there in the Midwest and got a job with a firm in Chicago that had 850 CPAs in the Chicago office. As far as big accounting firm experience goes, it was exactly what these guys wanted. To my surprise, two and a half years later, they called me and said, “Hey, are you ready to come back to St. Augustine?”

I came back and this was 1999 after two and a half years up there. I joined the firm that I am now the managing partner of. There have been a couple of iterations of that, but my partner Fred Wainio and I, he was a tax manager in the firm when I was an intern. He and I have been working together basically for 21 years. Your podcast here of longevity definitely applies to this case. Anyway, after working up through the ranks, I became a partner in the firm. We changed the name of the firm to Taylor Wainio and Neville in 2003. Then we spun a portion of the business off in 2011, which was my portion of the business. Now you see the firm that we have now, which is Neville Wainio CPAs.

Basically other than for about a five month period in 2012, Fred and I have been working together for 21 years and been doing the CPA thing here in St. Augustine for that whole time.

Jay Owen: That’s awesome. That’s one of the things that I’m trying to do in this podcast is connect with other people who have been through different iterations over time, grown up through something and learned through that. One of the things I heard from that and this seems to be kind of a theme with a lot of people that I talk to is this idea that you had other people in your life at that point. You said, “Hey, here’s what we need you to do. Go do this.” Whether or not you classify them as a mentor or not, it’s kind of in that ballpark of having other people that will speak into your life basically and help with that. How has that affected you over time?

Just having other people that have helped come alongside you and either counsel you or drive you in the right direction or redirect you at certain points. Love to hear your insight on that.

Todd Neville: Dead on. I see people who take the risk of starting a business. I think you’re one of them maybe starting a business right out of school. That wasn’t me. I needed that mentorship as you said. Accounting profession especially, it’s almost been apprenticeship type of profession. Going through the steps with a mentor and I consider my partner …

Even though I’m the managing partner now, my partner, being mentored by him, being mentored by our old partner Dale Taylor who’s now retired, I absolutely owe so much to those guys who took me through that, who invested in me early on, who saw, “Hey, here’s a 22 year old kid that doesn’t really know anything other than his education and we’re going to take the time to train him up through everything from the professional aspect of the business to owning a business to being a good citizen in the community.” All of those values were instilled through those mentorship, those mentor relationships. I think there are three different areas where I had mentors in my life. Family first. There’s no better mentor than your dad and your mom.

I talk to them every single day. They live in St. Augustine Beach. I live downtown. We see each other at least weekly, if not more. Then my professional mentors would be Dave Taylor and Fred Wainio, those guys. Then the civic mentors which were outside of that realm, but that I worked with which were guys like Brian Wilson and Bill Proctor and people like that that I met through rotary and mutual clients and things like that. I think all of those would be examples of that mentor and you take things from each of them.

Jay Owen: Yeah, absolutely. I mean for me in my group it was interesting because I started super young. I actually started the business when I was still in high school. It kind of grew out of that, but it was more of a hobby than anything when I started. It got to a point where I wasn’t sure it was going to last. When I started working for my uncle, who’s actually in the insurance industry, got my license. Worked with him for six months and I would say that that six months was probably the best business education that I ever had.

Because I think there’s so many things that we can learn through traditional education and especially someone like an accountant you have to, but then there’s like the things that you can’t necessarily learn without having to walk through and have somebody else help walk you through them. You kind of hit on kind of civic responsibility and community. I know that that’s one of the things that you’re heavily involved with. That’s actually how Todd and I met originally. Well, to some extent, we kind of knew of each other within St. Augustine not that long ago now. Although you wouldn’t know it from looking at the city because it’s been so resilient, was hit with a hurricane, Hurricane Matthew. Todd was heavily involved on the city side orchestrating all kinds of recovery efforts.

I’m a little farther north in the county and was trying to do a lot volunteer wise. On the other side of things, we kind of collided paths and we’re able to work together through some of that. I’d love to hear how you got into that civic and community atmosphere because you kind of have this split role now of having to run a business, then also having the opportunity to be involved in the city in a very significant way. I love to hear how you balanced those things and even how you got into them.

Todd Neville: The role in the city, I mean I remember a past mayor here in St. Augustine, Greg Baker. I have known him for 20 something years. It was probably almost 20 years ago that he and I were talking about this and he made the comment. Being on the city commission, being the mayor is truly public service. Where that conversation came from was there was talk at the time of how much should the city commissioner get paid. We were both talking about the fact that it needs to be public service because you want people in that role that are there to improve our community versus make it a job for themselves. That aspect of it, the public service aspect, really came to light when my wife and I had our first child.

At the time I always had the rule that I would never serve on more than three boards at one time. The reason that I had that rule is because when I do something I want to do it well. If I stretch myself too thin, I’m not going to be able to do it. One of the things when we had our first son and our only son was my wife said, “You know, you’re investing all this time in the community. Are we having the most impact we can have with your time?” When we really looked at it, we said, “You know what? There is a way that we can have more impact with the same amount of investment.” What I did was I pulled off some of the boards that I was on, which I was on a bank board.

That’s one that, “Okay. It’s professionally fulfilling, but as far as giving back to the community, it doesn’t really do a whole lot.” I pulled off of National Running Club Board. I want to say I was treasurer of the Rogue Runners Club of America at the time. Not local community impact. The reason I did that was I reached out to another past mayor, Tracy Upchurch, before I ran and I said, “You know, what is the time commitment? What is the impact on your family when you do this?” One of the things he told me, he said, “Hey, from a time perspective, think of it as serving on two boards.” He said, “You serve on a hospital board. You serve on a bank board. You serve on this running club board. City’s commission is basically two of these boards at any one time.”

I said, “Okay. Well, if I’m going to keep my rule of three boards, I resign from two of the boards so I can run.” That’s one of the ways we came you with the balance. It’s also one of the key decision points in do we want to run for city commission and have an impact on this community. Having an impact on your community the way that we have is absolutely rewarding. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Going back tying it into the mentorship question, my old partner Dale Taylor used to always talk about being a good citizen. He talked about that was one of the things that he wanted with his kids. It was something that I said, “Okay. That’s something that going forward in my professional career I want to make sure that that is something that I’m doing myself.”

You look at the different things, everything from take, stock, and children. We started a running camp for middle school, high school kids. Heavily involved in coaching kids. Pro bono adjunct professor at Flagler College. Just those things. All these things that how can we have an impact on our community and make our community better.

Jay Owen: Yeah, that’s awesome. I think it’s interesting because what I’m hearing in that is really kind of the initial heart and desire to be involved in the community and not just to use it for some benefit for business. My uncle always told me in sales, he said, “If you really want to sell somebody, just help them. Desire to help them, not to sell them.” I kind of think of that in the same way. I don’t know if you do, but it’s kind of this idea of this like you can be involved in something like rotary for example and you could be there for your own benefit or you could be there for the true benefit of the organization.

The organizations that helps. Ultimately sometimes the results are the same. Always for the most part being involved in the organizations build your own network and builds the number of people that you know. People tend to like to work with people they know, like and trust. There’s value to that, but at the same time, I think having the heart in the right place often results in a better long-term result.

Todd Neville: I could not agree with that more. When I’m mentoring our younger accountants or younger civic minded people, one of the things I always tell them is never ask to be on a board. Never ask to do something. Just go start helping out. I tell them this all the time, “If you help out, if you get involved and just try to make a difference, you will be recognized. People will notice it and all of a sudden you’ll getthat request to, ‘Hey, let’s …'” For example, my first civic thing and this sounds silly was I was president of Ancient City Road Runners here in town. It was one of those things. I went to the first monthly meeting. Just started showing up. Would show up for races, help.

Next thing I know someone says, “You know, we need some younger blood as president. Let’s make him president.” Well, next thing you know people recognize what I was doing there and the community that I was building. A guy named Brian Wilson who owns Jack Wilson Chevrolet here in town, he reaches out to me and he’s like, “You know what? I’ve watched what you’ve been doing. I really like to see you serve on the Visitors and Convention Bureau Board.” Next thing you know it just snowballs because people see you involved. Like you said, they get to know you. They get to trust you. They get to see your work ethic. You don’t even need to go and proactively say, “Hey, I want to be on this board.”

It’s something I really push people to do. Just go get involved yourself. Don’t ask for a position.

Jay Owen: One of the things that I’m kind of hearing through that that I think is a big key point that a lot of people overlook when it comes to the longevity of a business is just this idea of patience. A lot of my staff now are millennials. It didn’t used to be, but they are now. A lot of people say that millennials in general are lazy or unproductive, all these kind of things. I don’t actually believe that at all because I have a team of people that are not like that. They’re hardworking and everything else, but if you all listen to this, sorry but it’s true, millennials sometimes can tend to be impatient, but I think a lot of it is the product of like the society that we’ve created. I mean when I was a kid, if you wanted … This is where I start to feel old all of a sudden.

When I was a kid, when I wanted to watch this particular cartoon that came on Saturday morning at nine o’c lock, you had to wake up and turn on the TV at nine o’clock on Saturday if you want to watch that show. When it was done, you had to wait until the next Saturday to watch the next episode. My kids barely even understand. Like if they’re watching live TV, they’re like, “Let’s watch the next one.” I’m like, “No. No. There is no next one. That was it. You have to wait until next week.” It doesn’t even make sense to them.

Todd Neville: To me I’m with you on that in that I don’t think it’s a millennial thing. I think it’s a 22 to 29 year old thing. I say that because when I started work … I graduated college in 1997. I’m part of generation X. The same things were said about us.

Jay Owen: Yeah, sure.

Todd Neville: It has nothing to do with generation X or millennial. You are 22 years old. You’re fresh out of college or high school or whatever. It takes time to understand that perseverance and delay of gratification is something if you want to be successful that you have to have. It’s something that my parents instilled in me. The firm I work for up in Chicago, we had a start class of 37 people. 37 22 to 25 year olds right out of college. All going to be sitting for their CPA exams. I got tagged by the partners, all the partners started calling me old school. It was because of that exact thing. All these other new hires that I was around, they wanted it now. They want it. “Oh, you know what? I’m going to go to this other firm because somebody offered me $5,000.”

Big picture, if you took a step back, making the investment in that specific location and saying, “Okay. There’s a long-term path here. If I pay my dues here, if I grind it out here, the long-term result is way better than that short-term $5,000 raise or signing bonus or whatever.” I don’t think it’s necessarily a millennial versus a gen X thing. I think it’s being young. The one other thing one that topic is I was a collegiate cyclist. I rode for Indiana University. One of the things that I’ve done to give back as an alum is I host … Being here in Florida, I host our college bike team’s winter training trip every year. I started it before I was married. I’ll have these college kids come down and do their winter training.

One of the funny stories is when my wife and I first met and we first got married, she was very worried about, “Hey, we’re having 11 18 to 22 year olds come live with us?” She’s like, “Well, do we need insurance because they’re going to go out drinking or they’re going to be partying?” I was like, “No.” I said, “I don’t think you understand. These are goal driven kids who are coming here for one purpose and that is to improve themselves as cyclists.” After the first year she just fell in love with it. All of a sudden you see a group of kids like that that are all millennials and their focus and how driven they are toward a goal and you see it go across all the different aspects of their lives. It’s not only cycling, but you talk to one of them.

“Oh, I’m a biomed major,” and talk through what their goals are in life and what they’re walking through, what internship they have lined up, what they’re doing with their graduate school, whatever it is. It’s not a millennial thing. I mean there are plenty of very driven 22 year olds out there. I believe in the next generation big time.

Jay Owen: Yeah, I totally do too which is good because there’s a lot of next generation coming up and we need them to be patient and willing to put those hours in it. Those cycling kind of reminded me of the fitness side of your life. You’ve been heavily involved in doing marathons, even an Ironman I think and a lot of cycling as a result of all that too. My wife did a half Ironman and just watching her train for that, you watch people like that … My wife’s dad. He’s 72 years old and he’s training for one right now. He is driving like every other weekend. You look at that you think you don’t just do it. I’m not going to go out and run a two and a half marathon tomorrow, right?

Maybe eventually I could with a lot of training and diet and focus and practice, but it’s the same thing. Preparing for a race like that is no different than running a business long-term.

Todd Neville: Really it’s the same sort of thing and this is why I don’t think it’s a millennial thing. When I was doing that and I was racing at a very high level, I had so many people come tell me, “Hey, I want to run a marathon. Will you write up a training plan for me?” Okay. Well, let’s talk about where you are fitness wise, what your history of running is in the past. So many times it’s you’ve been running for three weeks and you want to run a marathon. Let’s get you running 5Ks and then 10Ks and then half marathons. Let’s talk about a marathon three or four years from now. So many people did not want to make that long-term investment. They want, “I want to run a marathon this summer.” I would tell them, I’m like, “Listen. From a health perspective, it’s good for you.

I want to see you commit to this so this becomes a lifestyle so you’re more healthy versus a bucket list item.” Most people do anywhere from 12 to 24 week marathon training programs. I usually would circle marathon three years out. Because when you make it that long-term and make everything over those three years toward one goal at the end, yeah, people say, “Okay. You’re putting all your eggs in one basket,” but the results are always going to be 10 times better.

Jay Owen: I’m interested to hear you compare something like that where you’re setting this long-term … It’s just a perfect analogy in business. You set this long-term three year goal of where you want to go. I want to run a marathon and I want to run marathon X amount of times. It’s very specific. It’s very measurable. With the right training, it’s attainable. I’m curious how that relates to kind of how you see your business, how you’ve seen it overtime and how you along with your team set those goals and what kind of systems you put in place in order to make sure that you’re heading towards them. How do you track those things overtime?

Todd Neville: There’s two things that I really think are analogous and you hit on one of them which is you have something measurable. Let’s say three years from now you’re going to run that marathon. Well, you’re going to have markers along there that you’re going to set as intermediate goals to say, “Are we going in the right direction?” It might be a time in a 5K. It might be what your weight is. It might be miles in a week. It could be all types of different measurable goals. I think being measurable is a big key in business and knowing what you want as a desired outcome. Then the second thing is understanding that long-term goal is a trajectory and not a straight line. They’re two different things. You’re going to have setbacks along the way.

You’re going to have a bad run. You’re going to have a bad week. You might get hurt. You might go on vacation and gain five pounds. I mean you’re going to have setbacks along the way and that applies to business too. I mean I’ll give you an example. The biggest setback I’ve ever had in my business was this storm. We were out of our office for three straight months. We did everything we could during that time to maintain client contact, to meet deadlines, to do all those things that we’ve always historically done, but we did not hit the mark. We absolutely didn’t. When you take 11 employees out of their normal comfort zone and we were working out of our dining room. We were working at coffee shops. We were working out of our lawyer’s conference room for six hour days instead of eight hour days.

We absolutely did not hit the mark with some of our clients. We missed some deadlines. We lost some clients. We knew that okay, this is a bump. This is not something that we’re throwing the towel in. As long as you have that understanding and know how to correct from it and see where the measurables are, you can sustain long-term.

Jay Owen: I love that. Just transparency I think because there’s pressure in our culture to just always appear like we’ve got it together, right? Like Facebook creates this mentality of what I would say the highlight role versus the behind the scenes. Everybody sees the highlight role and nobody necessarily sees behind the scenes. It’s just good for other people I think sometimes to hear other business owners say, “Hey, sometimes we mess it up.”

Todd Neville: You know Jay, why I don’t feel bad about saying that is because we had the things in place to survive. We had a business that we had cash reserves. We had an open line of credit. We had our balance sheet in a position that we could weather something like that. For three months we build a 26% year over year. I mean when you see a 74% decrease in your revenue for three months, most businesses can’t sustain that. Since we did have an open line of credit, since we did have a good balance sheet, we were able to go out and get a small business loan. We were able to utilize the line of credit. We were able to utilize our cash reserves to be able to weather that. Now that got us through the short-term. Now we’re going through.

We staffed up. We went from seven employees to 11 employees to catch up on the backlog of work. What it’s going to do is it’s going to springboard us into a stronger, better business. Like I said, you have to look at the long-term trajectory and know that you’re going to have those hiccups along the way when you’re thrown a curve ball like having your entire office flooded out. I mean there’s not much we can do about that. That was an uncontrollable, but we had the things in place to be able to mitigate that uncontrollable.

Jay Owen: Well, it’s interesting because I just got to interview Cherry Davidson from Davidson Realtor recently. They’ve been in business for 28 years. When you think about real estate in general, it’s one of those businesses where it is hot or it is cold. Just to make it through the recession that happened that really hit real estate hard not that long ago, preparing for the worst case scenario and being ready is …

Todd Neville: It’s funny because it’s one of the things we tell our … I tell my clients all the time. I tell them, “Go get a line of credit.” They’re like, “We don’t need a line of credit. We have plenty of cash in the bank.” I said, “That’s exactly why you need a line of credit because when you don’t have plenty of cash in the bank, the bank’s not going to give it to you. You want to go get it.” It’s one of those things like you just said you’re preparing for the unknown. You’re preparing for those times that you have no idea it’s coming. I mean we had no idea a hurricane was coming. I think it’s the preparation is why I’m not embarrassed about it. If we weren’t prepared, I mean we wouldn’t be business right now if we weren’t prepared.

Jay Owen: Ultimately that kind of lends itself to this conversation. Like that’s the whole point of this is building a business that last you have to be prepared to get through things like that. You’re a numbers guy. CPA. You know those kind of things which for a lot of people is a difficulty when they’re starting a business. A lot of people are technicians in their own fields or maybe they’re entrepreneurs. A lot of time entrepreneurs aren’t strong with detailed accounting. I’ve had my weaknesses over the years. I love to just talk some tactical tips for people to kind of be aware. One of the things I always say is that cash flow is one of the things that gets people in the most trouble with business. I have this analogy that I joke about.

It’s kind of like juggling money. There’s the pipeline. There’s receivables and there’s actual cash. You have to keep all of those balls moving at the same time otherwise things fall apart. If you’re thinking about other business owners and talking into … Maybe it’s a new business owner. Maybe it’s somebody that’s been around for a while, but they’re starting to grow and not sure how to manage some things. What are some real tactical tips somebody can take when it comes to their numbers and their books that might be helpful for someone who’s listening?

Todd Neville: One and this sounds really simple, okay, and it’s really granular is a new business should … I tell people this all the time. Invest in someone to help you. I’m talking about go get an administrative assistant. I know you’re hiring for one right now. Because all of those things to keep the business running. Do I as the CPA want to be the one chasing the invoices down? When you can pay somebody to help you do, I want to be the one scheduling my appointments. Do I want to be the ones binding stuff together? I see CPAs even in our own firm make the mistake all the time. I’ll come in on a Saturday. They’re in here on a Saturday putting a tax return together. What are you doing? That’s why we hire other people to do those pieces for you.

I don’t care if it’s a window washing business, if it’s a graphic design. Get that good administrative assistant to take that stuff off your plate because you want to be billable. That’s one that I learned early on. The second is be honest with yourself when it’s time to adjust. So often people wait. They’re not honest with themselves of hey, this person’s not working out or this person’s not a good fit or hey, we need to trim something from our budget and they wait until it’s too late. That’s very hard. Here’s the story I’ll tell people all the time. It’s very hard because you say, “Man, if I cut this person, I’m affecting their livelihood. Are they going to make their mortgage? Are they going to make their car payment?”

When you look overall, you have to take the big picture look of, “If I don’t cut that person, I’m going to affect all 11 employees and we’ve got 11 employees who all have families, who are all going to have their job at risk.” Taking that big picture approach and doing it when you know versus always waiting and dragging your feet, the worst thing you can do is drag your feet and stuff like that.

Jay Owen: Yeah, absolutely. We’ve only got a few minutes left so I’d like to hit on kind of what we’re talking about there a little more which is kind of people hiring, firing culture, that whole kind of hemisphere. One of the things that I think is interesting about having to get to that point where you let somebody go is that if they’re not the right fit for the role for the company, then it’s not good for them either. It’s better for them to be somewhere else where they are a good fit because everybody has unique talents, gifts and abilities that belong somewhere. If that seat doesn’t exist, we can’t always invent that for that person.

I always think that bringing people in is something I do very carefully and I love to kind of hear your thoughts about when you’re bringing in new team members, I make the analogy that it’s kind of like adding an ingredient to a soup. Once you put that ingredient in, it changes the whole flavor of the pot. I’d love to hear kind of like how you make those decisions when you’re hiring to go, “Hey, this is the right person to put on the team.”

Todd Neville: You know what? It’s funny because we went through some bumps last year because a long-term partner of ours … Until April of last year we had three partners. The third partner, Fred and I have worked together for 20 years, the third partner I had hired as a staff accountant in 2002. Well, after 10 years we made him a partner. When he decided he was not happy in the CPA world, he went to work with one of our clients as their CFO. Great relationship. Good departure. Everything was fine, but filling that role became very difficult. We’re at a good place now, but we went through a couple hires that were not the right fit. Where I made the mistake was I went for the resume of holy cow, this person has a CPA, Boston University MBA, all the tangibles were phenomenal.

You’re like, “Oh, this person’s great,” but then culturally it was not the right fit. I think the balance between the technical skill, the desire of the individual and then the cultural fit, I think all three of those need to be weighed. There are so many times that every business owner goes through this where they’re like, “I just need a warm body and the sea.” If a business owner is going to go that route, I always tell them make sure that that person understands this is temporary. This is a seasonal position or this is temporary or hire him as a contract laborer instead of a full time employee because the only people you want on the team, like actually on the team, are people who fit in culturally. For us that’s integrity, family driven and being a team member.

Those three things. We want to see those three things. One of the things I really try to do when I’m interviewing is to see if there’s any sense of entitlement. If you have a sense of entitlement, I don’t want you anywhere near or far.

Jay Owen: That’s awesome. I think you and I probably could talk all day and everybody would eventually not want to hear us anymore. What I always like to try and finish with is any resources that you personally used to help kind of keep yourself ahead of the curve? Maybe it’s particular books that you read or audio books or podcasts or blogs. How do you kind of keep yourself moving forward both in like a not just the technical sense of like what’s happening in your industry, but you as a leader, what are you doing for yourself to keep yourself educated and constantly growing?

Todd Neville: To me the biggest thing you can do is listen. I do that and I’m really lucky in the people that I have around me. I’ll share a couple. For example, every Friday morning I have a group of business owners, there’s 11 of us, who are all business owners and we have breakfast together. We ate breakfast this morning at Blue Hen. There’s 11 of us, but like this morning there were six of us that showed up. Everyone of them has these things sort of stories that you and I are talking about. It’s how do you find that next person. My admin assistant’s not working out. Where do I find the next one? Hey, I need a line of credit. Who should I talk to in town? Listening to the stories of those other business owners is where I probably learn more than anything.

Then the second piece is same sort of thing on the hospital board. On that hospital board you have … I think I’m the youngest member on the hospital board. There’s some older members who have years and years and years of business experience across the board of people who started their own business and built them or executive vice president of IBM, things like that. You see the full range. Seeing how large organizations have been successful is something that you can scale down to a small business and take a lot of those same policies and principles and apply them to the small.

Jay Owen: Awesome. I think that’s one of the things I’m most excited about being able to do this podcast. I figure if nobody ever even listens to it, at least I’m getting a lot out of the interviews.

Todd Neville: Exactly.

Jay Owen: It’s been really awesome already. Really appreciate your time today. I hope those listening get a lot out of it. I’m going to continue kind of carrying down this path. If you know of other folks that have been in business for a while and would like to kind of share their knowledge with others, I’d love to get them on the podcast. If you’re out there, thanks for listening. Appreciate it. Todd, thanks for being here today.

Todd Neville: Thanks for having me.

Jay Owen: This interview with Todd was kind of interesting for me because my 12 year old came along with me for the day and he was sitting in the room. A couple of things that we talked about with regards to being disciplined and having kind of structure and processes and things that we do on a regular basis in life in order to keep a business growing. When I went home later in that day, my son said to me, he’s like, “Dad, I’m going to make some checklist, a morning checklist. That’s what I’m going to do when I wake up so I kind of have a process that I follow.” It was neat just having him along for this interview and how much just he picked up off of just sitting through it. I hope that you’ve also picked up a few things listening to this conversation with Todd.

If you want to find out a little bit more about him and his business, you can find him online at NBWCPAS.com.